RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/feds-eff-…

The Bush administration on Tuesday will try to convince a federal judge to let stand a law granting retroactive legal immunity to the nation’s telecoms, which are accused of transmitting Americans’ private communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

At issue in the high-stakes showdown – set to begin at 10:00 a.m. PST – are the nearly four dozen lawsuits filed by civil liberties groups and class action attorneys against AT&T, Verizon, MCI, Sprint and other carriers who allegedly cooperated with the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program in the years following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The lawsuits claim the cooperation violated federal wiretapping laws and the Constitution.

In July, as part of a wider domestic spying bill, Congress voted to kill the lawsuits and grant retroactive amnesty to any phone companies that helped with the surveillance; President-elect Barack Obama was among those who voted for the law in the Senate. On Tuesday, lawyers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation are set to urge the federal judge overseeing those lawsuits to reject immunity as unconstitutional. At stake, they say, is the very principle of the rule of law in America.

“I think it does set a very frightening precedent that it’s okay for people to break the law because they can just have Congress bail them out later,” says EFF legal director Cindy Cohn. “It’s very troubling.”

I watched the FISA debate on the Senate floor, and although I was sometimes encouraged by the discussion, I was equally disappointed by the arguments I heard.

Retroactive Immunity is unacceptable if only because there were some phone companies that refused to comply, on the basis that they suspected it was illegal. Let’s be clear: certain companies proactively determined this would be illegal. This is a perfect case for a … what do you call it? Oh yeah: a Judge. See, a Judge would clear up the uncertainty because there’d be a record of the judgment. This could later be overturned, but that’s a world apart from the current situation.

The whole idea about warrants (or the FISA court, for that matter) is to determine if an action is legal BEFORE you commit that action.

RTFA: http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/545601

Two people were shot dead in a crowded toy store on Black Friday in a confrontation apparently involving rival groups, city officials said.

Palm Desert Councillor Jim Ferguson said police told him two men with handguns shot and killed each other.
…
The Palm Desert Police Department received calls of shots fired around 11:35 a.m., Riverside County sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said. He said officers were still investigating what prompted the gunshots.

Immediately after the shooting, about 20 people rushed into the World Gym across the street from Toys ‘R’ Us, the gym’s assistant manager Glenn Splain told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“They were crying, tearing and shaking,” Splain said, adding that one woman came in cradling a baby.

“Some people got into a fight,” said Splain, who spoke with some of the customers. “One of the guys here thought it was over a toy, but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots.”

Sarah Pacia of Cathedral City told The Desert Sun newspaper she was in the store with her two boys, ages 4 and 6, looking at colouring books when she heard a commotion in the next aisle. She thought it was people rushing to get a sale item. Then she heard three or four shots.

She said she froze, and store employees calmly escorted her out of the store.

“This is Toys ‘R’ Us. There are kids shopping in there,” Pacia said.

Combined with the Walmart Stampede, it’s possible this is the bloodiest Black Friday ever. Ugly. Very ugly.

RTFA: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/0…

Kids as young as 10 were posing as predatory paedophiles on Bebo and MSN to frighten schoolmates they had fallen out with.

The rozzers started investigating what they thought was just another case of a local nonce trying to groom children by befriending them online and arranging to meet up. But an anonymous tip-off revealed that kids were trying to settle playground rivalries by posing as perverts to frighten their victims.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police told the Manchester Grauniad:

“Information from the public has highlighted a possibility that the offenders could be children aged 10 and over, masquerading as a paedophile.

Ha! Rag posing as newspaper uncovers children posing as paedophiles.

RTFA: http://www.ussc.gov/ANNRPT/2006/SBTOC06.htm

This is the eleventh edition of the United States Sentencing Commission’s Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics. This Sourcebook contains descriptive statistics on the application of the federal sentencing guidelines and provides selected district, circuit, and national sentencing data. The volume covers fiscal year 2006 (October 1, 2005, through September 30, 2006, hereinafter “2006″). This Sourcebook together with the 2006 Annual Report constitutes the annual report referenced in 28 U.S.C. # 997, as well as the analysis, recommendations, and accounting to Congress referenced in 28 U.S.C. # 994(w)(3).
The Commission has continued its statutory mission to collect data on federal sentencing decisions. The Commission received documentation on 72,585 cases sentenced in 2006 under the Sentencing Reform Act. The Commission coded and assimilated the information from these sentencings into its comprehensive, computerized data collection system.

The numbers don’t lie.